Hokkaido Day 1- Chitose (千岁)

This will be the detailed account of my trip to Hokkaido from 12 to 18 Aug 2007. For most of the back-from-Hokkaido stories, the place seemed to only contain sight seeing and hot springs. However, our trip was different, and this made us very happy and satisfied.

"Hokkaido"(北海道), translated from the "Ainu" language, means a vast piece of swampy land that had dried up. Over 70% of this 2nd largest island in Japan is still covered by forest.

We boarded NH112 and departed at 8.30am. We were all quite excited on flight but were disappointed on the limited movies available. Meal was served at 10.30am and we(including the rest of the tour members) thought that was the breakfast. To our dismay, that was actually brunch, and no other meal was served during the 7 hours flight.
However, to our surprise, the crew served many trips of drinks including wine, green tea and juices. We kept 4 bottles of mini wine in our bag and that was our first happy “acquisition”.

We reached Narita Airport at 5pm Japan time and proceed to connecting flight to Chitose. Due to the large tour group size of 50 passengers, the settling of boarding passes and re-check in of luggage was quite a chaos. Luckily the tour guide and leader did a good job and the group stayed together most of the time. There were still no food, and by the time we reached Chitose Airport in Hokkaido, everyone was starving. We straight away proceed to Nikko Chitose Hotel and had Chinese food for dinner. Dinner was not tasty.

We then went up to our room, and to my horror, the room was extremely small! There was only enough room for 3 beds, and no space at all to open up our luggage. Luckily we were only staying for one night. It was about 10pm, and we then went out to explore.

The evening breeze was cooling and we had a walk for about 10 minutes to an area which the tour guide advised there will be local food. The area was very quiet but we can see that there were quite a few small eateries with enclosed entrance. None of us knew Japanese, but we went in to the shops and hand signs to the locals. We tried 3 shops but all were closing, until the fourth one who welcomes us in. This uncle was actually closing but he was kind enough to allow us in for supper. A series of chicken and duck talk followed and sis managed to get him to decide for us different types of Kushiyaki (串焼). We also drank cold sake which I don’t really like. First we had mince chicken, followed by pork belly. Then we had pig’s tongue which I passed, and ended with soft bone meat. It was a nice meal and the place was very traditional and cozy. It was overall a very nice experience for our first night in Hokkaido.